This volume presents a wide range of contributions that analyse the cultural, sociological and communicative significance of tears and crying in Graeco-Roman antiquity. The papers cover the time from the eighth century BCE until late antiquity and take into account a broad variety of literary genres such as epic, tragedy, historiography, elegy, philosophical texts, epigram and the novel. The collection also contains two papers from modern socio-psychology.

This is a newly revised, critical text of the fragments attributed to the Roman knight and mimographer Decimus Laberius, a witty and crudely satirical contemporary of Cicero and Caesar. Laberius is perhaps the most celebrated comic playwright of the late Republic, and the fragments of plays attributed to him comprise the overwhelming majority of the extant evidence for what we conventionally call 'the literary Roman mime'. The volume also includes a survey of the characteristics and development of the Roman mime, both as a literary genre and as a type of popular theatrical entertainment, as well as a re-evaluation of the place of Laberius' work within its historical and literary context. This is the first English translation of all the fragments, and the first detailed English commentary on them from a linguistic, metrical, and (wherever possible) theatrical perspective.

Each number includes "Reviews and book notices."

"To teach correct Latin and to explain the poets" were the two standard duties of Roman teachers. Not only was a command of literary Latin a prerequisite for political and social advancement, but a sense of Latin's history and importance contributed to the Romans' understanding of their own cultural identity. Put plainly, philology-the study of language and texts-was important at Rome. Critics, Compilers, and Commentators is the first comprehensive introduction to the history, forms, and texts of Roman philology. James Zetzel traces the changing role and status of Latin as revealed in the ways it was explained and taught by the Romans themselves. In addition, he provides a descriptive bibliography of hundreds of scholarly texts from antiquity, listing editions, translations, and secondary literature. Recovering a neglected but crucial area of Roman intellectual life, this book will be an essential resource for students of Roman literature and intellectual history, medievalists, and historians of education and language science.

This is the first detailed analysis of the fate of Lucretius' De rerum natura from its composition in the 50s BC to the creation of our earliest extant manuscripts during the Carolingian Age. Close investigation of the knowledge of Lucretius' poem among writers throughout the Roman and medieval world allows fresh insight into the work's readership and reception, and a clear assessment of the indirect tradition's value for editing the poem. The first extended analysis of the 170+ subject headings (capitula) that intersperse the text reveals the close engagement of its Roman readers. A fresh inspection and assignation of marginal hands in the poem's most important manuscript (the Oblongus) provides new evidence about the work of Carolingian correctors and offers the basis for a new Lucretian stemma codicum. Further clarification of the interrelationship of Lucretius' Renaissance manuscripts gives additional evidence of the poem's reception and circulation in fifteenth-century Italy.

Fragmentary texts play a central role in Classics. Their study poses a stimulating challenge to scholars and readers, while its methods and principles, far from being rigidly immutable, invite constant reflection on its methods, approaches, and goals. By focusing on some of the most relevant issues that fragmentologists have to face, this book contributes to the ongoing and lively debate on the study of fragmentary texts. This volume contains an extensive theoretical introduction on the study of textual fragments, followed by eight essays on a wide variety of topics relevant to the study of fragmentary texts across literary genres. The chapters range from archaic Greek epics (the Hesiodic corpus) to late-antique grammarian Nonius Marcellus as a source of fragments of Republican literature. All contributions share a nuanced, critical attention to the main methodological implications of the study of fragmentary texts and mutually contribute to highlighting the field’s common specificities and limitations, both in theory and in editorial practice. The book offers a representative spectrum of fragmentological issues, providing all readers with an interest in Classics with an up-to-date, methodologically aware approach to the field.